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C.S. Lewis interview with HarperOne Publisher Mark Tauber

October 28, 2013 by David Crumm

C.S. Lewis.

The name stands alone.

Even half a century after his death, no other Christian author—except St. Paul himself—has sold more books, decade after decade.

No one expected this in 1963. At that point, Lewis was a global figure with a huge output of inspirational books as well as works of serious literary scholarship, speculative science fiction, fanciful children’s novels—and countless radio broadcasts, as well.

But his death went almost unnoticed because he passed on November 22, 1963, the same day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and the world-renowned author Aldous Huxley died. As you will read in our interview with HarperOne’s Mark Tauber, publishers never imagined that Lewis’s body of work would attract generation after generation of loyal fans.

Given his enormous audience—and unprecedented sales—Lewis’s many books remain tightly controlled by the Lewis estate. For a good many years after his death, the books fell into a tangle of publishing arrangements circling the globe. Slowly but surely, HarperOne has been consolidating that book list and, nearly every year, produces attractive new editions.

TODAY’S C.S. LEWIS NEWS IN A NUTSHELL:
Just in time for Christmas 2013 …
and, for the 50th anniversary of Lewis’s passing …
and, as the UK honors Lewis with a special memorial at Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner …
and, as a new Lewis-Narnia movie based on The Silver Chair is freshly in the news …
for all of those reasons—HarperOne is excited about its array of C.S. Lewis editions.

ReadTheSpirit Editor David Crumm interviewed Senior Vice President and Publisher of HarperOne Mark Tauber about all of this news—and C.S. Lewis’s enduring popularity.

HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR INTERVIEW
WITH HARPER ONE’S MARK TAUBER
ON THE LATEST NEWS FOR C.S. LEWIS FANS

DAVID CRUMM: It’s absolutely stunning—in a world where the biggest stars are sexy singers or Hollywood heroes—to find a bespectacled Oxford professor with such a vast worldwide audience. He’s been dead half a century. He never even heard of YouTube.

MARK TAUBER: Yes, it is amazing.

DAVID: And, Lewis still is making news! To demonstrate this for our readers, let me list just a few of the magazines and newspapers with fresh Lewis stories on the day we’re doing this interview. On just one random day—there are headlines in: BBC News, Investor’s Business Daily, Tulsa World, Augusta Chronicle, National Review, Central Kentucky News and I’ll stop there but I could go on and on. The one that sticks out for me is Investor’s Business Daily. They’ve got a fresh profile of Lewis as a figure business people should know about.

MARK: (laughing) I’m laughing because, for a while, I had “C.S. Lewis” set up as a daily Google News alert—and I had to disable it because I was getting way too much stuff every day. And let’s leave the issue of the new movie aside for a moment. Even without the movie news, Lewis just keeps generating headlines.

DAVID: Why?

MARK: There are many reasons, but here’s a very important one: He was a guy who avoided what we think of today as tribalism. We publish these books and we watch closely who is buying and reading them. There is no one else I can think of who is so widely read in mainline Protestant churches, Catholic parishes, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and of course the evangelical community. He cuts across the entire Christian spectrum.

And that’s not all. There are all these other audiences he reaches: There’s the whole fantasy fan crowd for the Chronicles series. There are science fiction fans of his work in that genre. And, there still are scholars who seek out Lewis for his scholarly work. It’s not surprising that some of the best-known, most-followed Christian leaders today—people like Rick Warren and so many others—keep pointing to C.S. Lewis. Because of who he was and how he approached his work—Lewis cuts across all these lines. He didn’t dive into the the type of culture war that is so common today. He unites people.

DAVID: What would Lewis think of his ongoing success 50 years after he left the planet? Any guess?

MARK: Well, I’m not sure what he would make of it. I’m not sure how he would feel about people from very different perspectives using his stuff and claiming him as theirs. But he still is probably the most influential Christian voice of the day, certainly one of the most influential. I don’t think anyone would debate that.

DAVID: He lived in an era of “big tent” Christianity, we might say. Today we’ve got all these civil-war-style trenches dug between various Christian groups. In Lewis’s heyday—in the heyday of all the Inklings we can say, I think—Christianity was more of a single voice against secularism and various dark forces. Both Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were deeply affected by World War I and World War II. Their voices were raised, not in political partisan causes within Christianity, but on behalf of what they saw as a planet-wide wrestling between faith and forces that would destroy faith.

MARK: Here’s a good example. Mere Christianity began as a series of BBC talks between 1942 and 1944. The question everyone was asking, then, was: How do we sort out this big mess we’re in—in the middle of World War II—so his series of talks fit right into mainstream news. He was on the cover of TIME Magazine right after the war. Yes, he was speaking and writing for a big tent.

DAVID: We could keep listing examples of this. Here’s another one: In 2008, the prestigious UK newspaper, The Times, ranked all of the greatest British writers since the end of WWII and Lewis—among all writers in all genres—ranked 11th. The special honors he will receive at Westminster aren’t given lightly. Many people to this day credit Lewis as a key figure in their conversion stories.

MARK: My own story begins with growing up as an evangelical. I went to a big southern California megachurch. Now, I see a lot of the old dividing lines falling away. But I can say that Lewis was—and is—a huge source for my faith.

Now, as a publisher, I find it just crazy that Lewis’s sales have not dropped after so many years. Of course, I know that his sales always rise in a movie year. And, there’s news of a movie that’s coming—The Silver Chair—but Lewis’s sales do well with or without a movie.

Here’s a smaller example—a new one. Bible Gateway has millions of unique visitors each month and they do a series of free newsletters people can sign up to receive. We proposed a C.S. Lewis quote of the day—and they announced it in August in a blog post. In two weeks, they got 26,000 people to sign up for a daily quote from Lewis.

DAVID: Yeah. That doesn’t surprise me at all. The Twitter feed of C.S. Lewis Daily is heading toward 1 million followers.

MARK: It shows the hunger out there for Lewis. Look at the Facebook pages on Lewis. We’re seeing a big number of Likes—and the actual sharing in Facebook is in the thousands every day.

THE GREAT DIVORCE: FROM WWII TO TODAY

DAVID: Let’s talk about some of the individual books. And let’s start with one of my all-time favorites: The Great Divorce. And I’m not alone. We keep seeing news items pop up about people trying to produce stage or film productions.

The book is short. There are a number of editions floating around, these days, including a nice-looking paperback edition in that big boxed set (see top image today). But I prefer the lovely hardback edition you’re selling. I like the soft feel of the dust cover and the little bus that’s just creeping onto the front cover—understated, I would call it.

Of course, fans of this book know that’s the bus to heaven on the cover. The question in the book is: Do we even want to get on that bus? It’s a dark, fictional-fanciful book in which a lot of people who are living in this very gray world simply aren’t interested in getting on that bus. The bus is right there, available to them, but they have all these excuses for remaining in their dreary homes.

This is another end-of-WWII book for Lewis. He published it first as a series in The Guardian starting in 1944. Then, it became this book.

MARK: I think of The Great Divorce as the quintessential post-war Lewis book. The world is so dark and gray, still half in rubble, still rationing in Europe.

This may surprise you, but The Great Divorce is the third-best-selling book of all the Lewis books. The first is Mere Christianity and that is closely following by Screwtape and, then, a little further away—but better than The Four Loves and often better than The Lion, the Witch in some years—is The Great Divorce.

CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: FOLLOWING ASLAN

DAVID: Let’s talk about Aslan and The Chronicles of Narnia. I want to point out a book that I’ve enjoyed myself: A Year with Aslan, which is 365 short daily readings from The Chronicles.

I’m guessing that 2014 will be a very good year for you with Narnia books—now that a new Silver Chair movie is in the news. On the day we’re talking, I checked Google News and there are 73 current news stories about that film production getting underway.

Here’s a bit of what the LA Times said about the film news: The beloved Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis sat on bookshelves for more than half a century before it found a home on the big screen. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, its famous first installment, came out in 2005, followed in 2008 by Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in 2010. And then—nothing. Now, it has been announced that a fourth Narnia film is on the way. The deal between C.S. Lewis Co. and Mark Gordon Co. will make the next film in the series, The Silver Chair.

MARK: They’ve been working on The Silver Chair project for a long time and they’ve finally landed that. The one that I keep hearing about is a Screwtape film. Three times over the last 10 years, we thought we were going to have a Screwtape movie—then, we keep hearing that it’s all about the scripts. I’ve heard that they just can’t settle on the right script.

DAVID: I imagine there will be some new Narnia editions coming in 2014—or whenever the movie is finished, right?

MARK: I’m sure our children’s group will be extremely involved when the film does open. Every time a new movie comes out, they do a new wave. The movies do lift all boats.

DAVID: We’ll stay tuned in 2014. For now, we’ll be recommending A Year with Aslan to readers for this holiday-shopping season.

SCREWTAPE: NOW WITH NOTES!

DAVID: OK, finally, let’s talk about The Screwtape Letters and this annotated edition that you released about a year ago. I think it’s a terrific holiday gift for that Lewis fan on readers’ lists. We’ve already discussed the popularity of the basic Screwtape book, year after year. I’ve still got my own father’s well-worn copy from the late 1950s, when the added section, Screwtape Proposes a Toast, was first bound into a single volume with the original text. I treasure that little book with Dad’s name jotted in the front and 1959, the year he bought it, in ball-point pen.

Since then, I can’t imagine how many copies I’ve bought, owned, given away—must be a couple dozen overall. So, why get a new Screwtape Letters? My argument is this: I love the feel and look of this annotated edition. Yes, I’ve got every kind of e-reader you can imagine and I read books, all the time, on everything from Kindle and iPad to my iPhone. But, there’s something about a well-made book.

I love the addition of red ink inside this book for the notes. There are a couple of hundred helpful annotations that first-time and veteran readers will find intriguing. I just think it would be a great gift to open on Christmas morning.

MARK: I agree with you that this book looks good and feels good. We chose special paper for this; and we carefully chose the red ink for the annotations in the margins. We’re also discussing an annotated Mere Christianity, so that may come down the pike later. But I am nervous about this edition. Some years ago, we published a classic-art edition of Narnia and it just didn’t work well. It sold fine, but our other editions way outsold it. I’m hoping that this annotated book does catch on.

DAVID: Well, we’re pushing it today and I agree with you: I hope it does catch some holiday-shopping buzz. I know people who already own the book and, still, I’d put this on a holiday shopping list for them.

So, before we close, what else should we say about Lewis?

MARK: I would add that we just don’t have very many public intellectuals like Lewis, anymore, and certainly not many Christian public intellectuals.

DAVID: To put that conclusion into someone else’s mouth, there’s evangelical scholar Mark Noll’s line: “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there’s not much of an evangelical mind.” For years now, Noll and others have been campaigning to change that.

MARK: There are some authors out there today who claim to be public intellectuals, but Lewis filled that role in a way we just don’t see today. He was able to speak in public ways—and in public places—in clear and thought-through ways. And, he found large audiences willing to listen and to buy his books. One of the projects we’ve just approved—and it’ll come out in the next couple of years—is a book that we’ll call How to Read by C.S. Lewis. This book will pull material from the whole corpus of his work, including his letters. He was a giant, not just as a Christian writer, but as a teacher. He had a lot to say that helps people read and write English. We see this upcoming book as a bold move to emphasize Lewis’s ongoing place in the shaping of modern media.

DAVID: Well, we wish you well with all of that. And—to our readers—stay tuned to ReadTheSpirit for more on Lewis in 2014.

WANT MORE ON C.S. LEWIS?

Buy the books! Click on any of the covers with today’s column to jump to the Amazon pages for those books. They include:

C. S. Lewis Signature Classics: Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, A Grief Observed, The Problem of Pain, Miracles, and The Great Divorce (Boxed Set)

The Great Divorce (Hardback Edition)

A Year with Aslan: Daily Reflections from The Chronicles of Narnia

Screwtape Letters: The Annotated Edition

WANT MORE INSPIRING GIFT IDEAS?

If you’re holiday shopping: Please, be sure to check out our ReadTheSpirit bookstore as well!

(Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion, spirituality, values and interfaith and cross-cultural issues.)

The Debbie Blue interview on Consider the Birds

October 14, 2013 by David Crumm

WHAT IF God is less like an eagle—and more like a … vulture?

What if the Spirit of God is less like a dove—and more like a … pigeon?

These are just a couple of the startling questions explored by the innovative Minnesota pastor Debbie Blue in her new book, Consider the Birds: A Provocative Guide to Birds of the Bible. You may have discovered Debbie Blue before today’s interview. You might have heard one of the popular podcasts she posts from her congregation: House of Mercy, in St. Paul, Minnesota. You may have heard this line that often is used to describe Debbie: “She approaches scripture like a farm wife handles a chicken, carefully but not delicately, thoroughly but not exactly cautiously.” House of Mercy often is called: “a pretty great church.” If this is sounding like a story by Garrison Kiellor, then you’re not far off the mark. Debbie and her congregation have been featured on Minnesota Public Radio.

And, just like listening to Garrison Kiellor, you may not agree with every story Debbie tells. But, you will think about the world a little differently after the encounter. You’ll definitely think about the Bible in new ways.

HIGHLIGHTS OF
OUR INTERVIEW
WITH DEBBIE BLUE
ON ‘CONSIDER THE BIRDS’

DAVID: Your church is in St. Paul but you really are a farmer, right?

DEBBIE: My family and I live on about 80 acres with four other families. We share the land together and, yes, we do some farming—but mostly we have what you would call gardens. We’ve been doing the House of Mercy for 18 years, so we’ve been at this for a while. I have a son who just went off to college for the first time and a daughter who is 13.

DAVID: It’s not what we would call a “commune,” though. For example, you’re not like a Bruderhoff Community with a shared kitchen and evening meals together. Your living situation is looser than that.

DEBBIE: We all have our own dwellings here. Our community has been going on for 18 years and I think it works because we’re not that intense of a community. We’re good friends who share the land. We do have occasional meals together.

DAVID: And it’s relevant to this book that you know what you’re talking about on a very practical level when you write about the natural world and our relationship with animals and birds. Or, as readers think about that promotional line comparing your qualities to a “farm wife”—well, the truth is, you do know something about farming.

DEBBIE: Yes, but the way I got interested in writing this new book actually was through my interest in medieval bestiaries.

DAVID: These were a bit like centuries-old encyclopedias of life on earth without the science. These medieval versions were created to draw Christian lessons from the animals.

DEBBIE: There had been a Christian tradition of trying to divide “man” from “beast” and the natural world from supernatural truth. But the medieval bestiaries took a different tack. In Job, it says: “But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you. Ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you.”

The creators of these bestiaries believed that every animal, every plant, every rock—every created thing—possessed a truth of God. Often, the bestiaries were illuminated prayer books or Psalters that included these images of wild creatures. The thought was that these images could teach us something about God.

Yes, these medieval versions were full of pre-scientific ideas and some of the morality in these books was quite different than what we would teach today. But I think of my book as a contemporary version of a bestiary—looking for truth in things that are not of human construction.

The creators of the bestiaries paid such careful attention to these creatures, assuming that they might unlock windows for us that we normally keep closed. So, I love being part of that tradition. This really goes back to Jesus himself, who said: “Consider the birds.”

DAVID: It’s in Matthew, although some of the newer translations now render it, “Look at the birds …” It’s part of Jesus’s “Do not worry” teaching—and there’s a version of it in Luke as well.

Then, I want to bring up another great selling point for your book: Millions of Americans love birds! The latest U.S. Fish and Wildlife Survey says there are nearly 50 million American bird watchers—the most intense kind of bird lovers. If you add in all the people who have bird feeders, who love birds in comic strips and animated movies, who sing about birds in popular songs—well, this is a very crowd-pleasing idea! It’s great for individual reading, for small group discussion and imagine preaching a sermon series on Consider the Birds? People would flock to church.

Are you a birder with a Life List?

THE ROMANCE OF BIRDS

DEBBIE: I’m not as serious about birding as I once was—as I explain in the book. Back when I was courting my husband, I was pretty serious about birding and he taught me how to identify warblers. I was totally smitten with that idea. We paid a lot of attention to birds for a while, then we had kids and I started a church and it didn’t seem feasible to tromp through fields and woods with binoculars for hours, anymore.

Birding does give you this attentive space, though, that I wanted to experience again. One reason I wanted to write this book was that it required me to go outside again and spend time being attentive to birds. In the discipline of birding you come to appreciate waiting—using your body and mind as you pay careful attention. As in any devotional practice, birding creates a space in our lives that our culture desperately needs.

DAVID: Let me read a little passage from your book’s Introduction. You write: “Falling in love and identifying birds have similar effects. Normal life is altered; every experience heightened; what was mundane begins to explode with meaning. You think birds are just birds—undifferentiated fluttering, then you find one magnified in your lens. You recognize its unique markings, lines and color. Your heart pounds. It is a cerulean warbler. It is your new mate. I believe both things have equal power to change your life. I’m not kidding. Jim and I spent our courtship looking for birds. We drove to Nebraska to see the cranes do their mating dances.”

But I should quickly add that, while this book is about appreciating the birds in the Bible in surprisingly new ways—this isn’t a book about bird watching per se. Here are the 10 birds to which you’ve devoted 10 chapters: Pigeon, Pelican, Quail, Vulture, Eagle, Ostrich, Sparrow, Cock, Hen and Raven.

IS GOD LIKE A VULTURE? (AND OTHER WINGED QUESTIONS)

DAVID: Like your beloved bestiaries, you play with the bird images in this book. So, let’s talk about two specific sections that certainly caught my eye and are likely to prompt a whole wave of sermons and group discussions coast to coast. I can just see the sermon titles out on the roadside sign boards—and curious folks showing up to see whether their local pastor has gone a little nutty.

Let’s start with your chapters on the Vulture and the Eagle. There are so many thought-provoking ideas, so much historical information and so many spiritual insights in these 40 pages that my copy of your book now has the corners of many of these pages bent down—lots of notes in the margins, too. I won’t try to explain everything you cover in these two chapters, except this:

You open our eyes to a whole new interpretation of the Hebrew term “nesher.” You write, “The Hebrew word nesher is often translated in our English versions of the Bible as ‘eagle,’ but most scholars agree that ‘griffon vulture’ is at least an alternative …”

Now, I’ve checked with rabbis on this point, because it is such a striking idea: God may be like a vulture. And I would say the consensus I’ve heard—not being a Hebrew scholar myself—is that you’re onto something here. While most would agree with the usual “eagle” translation of this term, the fact is: “Nesher” means a bird that tears with its beak and references in ancient scriptures do claim that this bird was the highest-flying of all birds.

The griffon vulture was one of the ancient birds known to the Jewish people—and flies far higher than eagles. In fact, one type of griffon vulture is confirmed to have flown more than 36,000 feet. We know that because it was ingested into the jet of an airliner over the Ivory Coast at that altitude. You’ve also got a pretty good ally in Rabbi Natan Slifkin, who writes for Zoo Torah.

DEBBIE: I like that you’re hearing this is a possible translation from the people you’ve consulted. At this point, though, I understand why Westerners can’t seem to bring themselves to more commonly translate nesher as vulture. Our culture regards vultures as horrific. We don’t like them. They eat dead bodies. I understand this. In Minnesota, we have mostly turkey vultures and it’s hard to appreciate them as physically beautiful. Their red faces look like they’ve had their skin pulled off.

So we may not be too eager, at first, to translate God telling Moses that God bore the Israelites on vulture’s wings or to translate Isaiah as saying we will rise up on vultures’ wings. Eagles are such powerful birds and we’ve come to respect them.

But think about this for a moment. Eagles are known for killing. Vultures hardly ever kill or hurt a living thing—they eat what’s already dead. Vultures are remarkable purifying machines. They take care of rotting remains that otherwise might spread disease. They have these crazy-strong digestive juices that kill bacteria. The Mayans refer to vultures as “death eaters.” That begins to make sense to me: We need something to rid death of its toxicity in our world. Vultures stare death in the face—and death passes right through their bodies, rendered harmless. I like this idea that God can take anything in and make it clean.

And vultures do fly higher than other birds—tens of thousands of feet in the air! I love the idea of a slowly waiting God who is soaring and ever-patient. Have you ever watched vultures soar? It makes me cry to see it. It’s really gorgeous.

And I also like the way that talking about this bird imagery in new ways questions some of the symbols we associate with nationalism and patriotism. The symbol of the eagle now is almost hopelessly laden with images of massive power, fierce patriotism, killer instinct. I think it’s time to rethink this.

THE PIGEON-DOVE QUESTION

DAVID: Well, compared with the Eagle-Vulture discussion, the Pigeon-Dove issue is crystal clear. They’re the same, really—all Columbidae. The point you raise in this part of the book is that the dove, as a symbol, has become boring from over-use. You write, “Maybe because it is such a familiar scene or because I’ve seen too many bad illustrations of it, or because the white dove has been overused as a symbol in commercial Christianity.” So, instead, you suggest that readers consider the possibility that dove references in Christianity might apply to pigeons in general.

DEBBIE: The dove is probably the most familiar bird in Christian symbolism. In each of the four gospels the Spirit appears at Jesus’s baptism as a dove. In the popular imagination, this has always been a snow white dove. But this story changes a lot when you realize that the bird at the baptism was probably more like a rock dove, which we might more commonly call a pigeon.The dove now is totally bland, but what happens when we think of the Holy Spirit as a pigeon? We tend to think of pigeons as dirty; we call them “rats with wings.” I love it that the symbol of the Holy Spirit might be a hair’s breadth away from human trashiness.

Yet, think of pigeons for a moment. They are everywhere! They leave droppings on our sidewalks and our window sills. What if the Holy Spirit is like the pigeon? What if the Spirit is always underfoot to the point that we almost hate the constant presence—always leaving signs of the Spirit’s presence—everywhere!

When we think of the Spirit as something rare and pure as driven snow, then we forget that the Spirit of God is far more complex than that—fuller, messier, everywhere in life. We can get hung up on purity. But, remember, when we say God created all life, everything was teeming and multiplying and swarming. Maybe the Spirit is more creative than pure. Maybe we need to rethink what holy truly is.

DAVID: What I like about this section of your book is the realization that you don’t have to travel all the way to St. Peter’s at the Vatican and pray in front of the snow-white-dove stained glass window there. You might have just as full of an experience of God’s presence on a park bench in New York City, feeding the pigeons.

DEBBIE: That’s my hope. I hope we can experience God everywhere and find that grace everywhere, not just in rarefied settings.

DAVID: If you could talk to readers finishing your book, what would you tell them to do next? How do you hope your book will affect people?

DEBBIE: I hope people will start paying attention to what’s around them everyday—the birds and the bushes and the grace of God around us all the time. Emily Dickinson wrote: “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers …” and, if that is true, I hope we can increase people’s passion for keeping the world as beautiful as it is, now. I hope we’ll see more people working against climate change.

I hope people think about this: Hell would be a place without birds.

And I hope that I can help people to read the Bible in new ways—especially those who just can’t engage with the Bible now. I’m saying: There are layers and layers of meaning you can discover in the Bible. You can turn it—and turn it again—and look at it in new ways. There’s so much here, if we just look!

CARE TO READ MORE? OR HEAR MORE?

GET THE MUSIC! Debbie Blue’s House of Mercy also is a haven for musicians. Here is the overall House of Mercy music site. For the release of her new book, Debbie and her friends compiled a musical companion for readers who may be immersing themselves in the creative possibilities of birds for the first time. Visit this CD webpage for Bird Music, which describes the 15 tracks this way: The collection ranges from the old-time country sound of “The Great Speckled Bird” to the folk-pop of “Awake” to the jazzy cover of “Early Bird.” Tucked in-between these diverse styles is the gorgeous a cappella version of “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” that slows down and draws the listener in.

GET THE BOOK! Amazon offers Consider the Birds: A Provocative Guide to Birds of the Bible in paperback and Kindle editions.

ENJOY MORE ON READ THE SPIRIT: One of our own popular books is Conversations with My Old Dog, by Rob Pasick. You’ll also enjoy our interview with Marc Bekoff on The Animal Manifesto and Dr. Laura Hobgood-Oster on The Friends We Keep. We also highly recommend the Faith Outreach department of the U.S. Humane Society. If you are interested in the spiritual values of farm life, you’ll enjoy our recent interview with Mennonite author Shirley Showalter. And—new this week—FaithGoesPop writer Jane Wells tells us about a record-setting discovery about one amazing kind of bird.

(Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion, spirituality and interfaith and cross-cultural issues.)

The Shirley Showalter interview: So much beneath this bonnet!

September 28, 2013 by David Crumm

“Put a bonnet on it—and it will sell.” That marketing trend has sold thousands of Amish romance novels and even Amish murder mysteries. This formula has turned heads of even the most worldly publishers toward the riches of the Anabaptist tradition. Radio and TV hosts should be flocking to invite Shirley Showalter onto their talk shows.

But, it’s easy to misunderstand Shirley Showalter’s remarkable new memoir, Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World. At best, the cover may suggest a nostalgic souvenir from what millions of tourists call “Amish country.” At worst, you might mistake this as just another “bonnet book.”

BENEATH THIS BONNET

Let’s get a few things straight—so you’ll see the unique gifts of this book and Shirley Showalter’s voice.

SHIRLEY IS THE REAL DEAL: Raised Mennonite, she had an Andy-Griffith-meets-It’s-a-Wonderful-Life childhood full of colorful stories, savvy lessons in living a meaningful life—and good cooking. This is not back-handed praise. This is a sign of the memoir’s unique appeal: When is the last time you read a page-turner of a childhood memoir in which the main character doesn’t suffer the tortures of the damned? As Editor of Read The Spirit magazine, that’s one of the fascinating issues I raise with Shirley in our interview today.

GOOD EATING: Did you catch the “cooking” reference? This book serves up recipes. No, you’re not likely to follow Shirley’s “Food for a Barn Raising” instructions—but you are likely to try her Steamed Cherry Pudding, Shoo Fly Pie, Beet Pickles—and the famous family cookie recipe that is the subject of our Feed The Spirit column for this week.

A DOORWAY INTO A COURAGEOUS WORLD: Every American knows something about the Amish—and Read The Spirit has reported extensively on the Amish, too. However, few Americans know much about the Mennonites, a major branch of the centuries-old Anabaptist movement that today is known for its courage and generosity in peacemaking and community building. Blush is a welcoming doorway into that world—a world that Shirley herself still proudly represents.

So, here are some additional recommendations:

Shirley Showalter’s Website—the personal home for Shirley’s work as an author.
MennoMedia—the hub of Mennonite media today. You’ll also want to visit the MennoMedia About page.
Herald Press—the MennoMedia-related publishing house that you’ll want to consult for thought-provoking books about peace and justice. Read The Spirit also strongly recommends two other recent Herald Press books: Logan Mehl-Laituri’s new For God and Country (In That Order) and Jonathan Larson’s gripping, eye-opening Making Friends among the Taliban.

AND NOW …

HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR INTERVIEW WITH SHIRLEY SHOWALTER
ON ‘BLUSH,’ A MENNONITE MEMOIR

DAVID CRUMM: Today, you don’t wear a bonnet. There still are many visibly traditional Mennonites in the U.S., but you are part of the Mennonite Church USA, a denomination of about 1,000 congregations in which members don’t tend to follow traditional dress codes, right?

SHIRLEY SHOWALTER: Our church does contain some members who still are conservatively dressed, but many of those members are older. We no longer have to follow the rules and regulations under which I grew up. Our members no longer have to be “plain” on the outside.

No one can tell just by looking at me today that I am Mennonite. So, what defines us? This question has challenged me to grasp for and hold onto the deepest values in the theological commitments of the Mennonite church. I really would love to be “plain” on the inside now. I love the phrase, “simplicity on the other side of complexity.” That’s from Richard Rohr.

DAVID: And from Thomas Merton before Richard; Jean Vanier of L’Arche loved that line, too, and, even before that, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: “I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” There’s a lot of shared wisdom there.

SHIRLEY: That kind of simplicity is what I seek myself—and what I hope my church is helping its members and the rest of the world to seek.

‘CAN A MEMOIR BE ABOUT A HAPPY CHILDHOOD?’

DAVID: We will talk more about the Mennonite movement in a moment, but I have to tell readers: This book’s narrative is very compelling. I’m not alone in saying that—Bill Moyers praises your book, too. At the same time, this is a strikingly simple and happy story. I mean, the worst thing I can recall your doing in the course of this book is locking your little brother inside the chicken house on your family farm until he cried.

SHIRLEY: One of the questions I had in writing my story was: Is it possible to write a good memoir that’s primarily about a happy life? (laughs) Well, now that I’ve written this book, I hope the answer to that question is yes!

It is a serious question: Think about Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes—such an incredibly hard childhood! For a while, writers seemed to be competing with these misery memoirs—each one writing about a life more miserable than the last one. Or there’s The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls—that’s an amazing memoir about a very strange family. Misery and strangeness seemed to be selling. I think that’s one reason James Frey felt so much pressure to put really tough details into his book.

DAVID: Yes, and it landed him in hot water when his A Million Little Pieces proved to contain as much fiction as fact. So, back to the original question: No one is murdered in your memoir; you aren’t abused; there’s no one addicted to crack cocaine; so, can a book-length memoir work, if the life is essentially happy?

SHIRLEY: For me, Haven Kimmel answers this question: In her books, she has shown that, yes, we can write about an essentially happy life in a way that readers will enjoy. All lives have conflict in them—conflict that makes for a good story—even though the person’s life may not be full of dramatically dysfunctional experiences.

DAVID: Well, I loved your book and my answer to the question we’re discussing is Frederich Buechner’s answer. He has written this—and said it—in various ways throughout his career. Here’s one passage where he writes: “My story and your story are all part of each other, if only because we have sung together and prayed together and seen each other’s faces so that we are at least a footnote at the bottom of each other’s stories. In other words all our stories are in the end one story, one vast story about being human, being together, being here.”

SHIRLEY: Thank you for sharing that. You know the most risky words I wrote in this book? The opening words: “Ever since I was little, I wanted to be big. Not just big as in tall, but big as in important, successful, influential. I wanted to be seen and listened to. I wanted to make a splash in the world. Admitting this desire still feels like a huge risk. It contradicts much of what my church and my home taught me about the importance of humility.”

You cannot know how frightening it was for me to write those words—and to put them there on the first page of the book. The answer to this whole question—and to the risk I am taking in those opening words by putting myself out there in this way—they’re answered in Buechner’s words. We want to share these stories because, in the end, all our stories are one story.

HOW ‘HOPE OPENS UP FOR US’ IN RECALLING CHILDHOOD

DAVID: Flipping through your book—let’s say in the Amazon “Look Inside” feature—will show readers some of your black-and-white photos of farm life and, of course, photos of you among school children. They’re charming photos. The accompanying stories take us into 4-H projects, farm life, the kitchen, school—and so on.

What impressed me, in reading your book, is that it brings to life the process described by the philosopher and scholar of world religions, Jacob Needleman. In our earlier interview with Jacob, he urged people to try to recall the inspiration of childhood. Rediscovering the boundless curiosity of childhood, Jacob says at one point: “That’s where we can join with great scientists, with searching philosophers, with religious seekers and with so many young people today. When we reach toward that point of sharing this larger need, then hope opens up for us.”

I think readers will have fun with the passages in your memoir where you describe the books you discovered as a child. I smiled when I read about Bunny Brown, one of the series for young readers produced by the Bobbsey Twins folks. And you read the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. Tell us about Christmas Carol Kauffman, who is still available from resellers on Amazon.

SHIRLEY: I read all her books. She was a Mennonite fiction writer. Of course, she wrote stories for the purpose of moral uplift, but I liked her stories because they were about worlds I recognized. I did begin to notice, as I read more of her books, that they had very similar plots. She was very important to me, because she was a Mennonite writer.

Tom Sawyer also was an important book in my life. And, Robinson Crusoe, too! I made my brother play my man Friday.

Then, I should mention Gene Stratton-Porter! When I read her book, A Girl of the Limberlost—which was also one of my mother’s favorite books—I became an instant naturalist. I started to go out into the fields and tried to gather butterflies. I now recognize and appreciate the independent woman who was behind that book more than I realized at the time. But, even from my first reading of it, that book was very important to me. I was able to get into Gene Stratton-Porter’s characters in a way I never was able to get into Christmas Carol Kauffman’s characters.

WHY ARE YOU A MENNONITE? ‘COMMUNITY’

DAVID: We’re moving full circle here. It’s time to return to the question of what makes Mennonites distinctive. Christmas Carol Kauffman was born on Christmas Day in 1901, which was the source of her unusual name. In addition to writing semi-autobiographical stories like Lucy Winchester, she and her husband were remarkably successful Mennonite missionaries in Missouri. Among other things, they did prison ministry.

As a journalist for many years, I’ve been dispatched to cover major disaster stories in various parts of the U.S. and, often, I would run across crews from Mennonite Disaster Service. So, you’re educators; you’re peacemakers; you’re community builders; you’ve got very well-organized relief crews.

What makes you remain a Mennonite?

SHIRLEY: The first word I would choose is: community. There is a commitment to support each other in congregational life that is very strong. In fact, my own congregation is called Community Mennonite Church. It’s a place where people weep with you when you’re weeping and rejoice with you when you’re ready to rejoice.

As a person—I need help to be who I say I am. So, it helps me to be surrounded in my church by people who have made these same kinds of commitments. We want to avoid the worst of American consumerism, the worst of American individualism and the worst of American militarism. Together, we try to speak and live the opposite of those things.

DAVID: Your book is coming out when America’s wealth gap is so bad that we haven’t seen such inequality since the Gilded Age. Your Mennonite community stands in direct contrast to that winner-take-all approach to American culture, right?

SHIRLEY: It sickens me to see the gap widen so far in my lifetime. Another reason that the word “community” is in our church title is that we are rooted in our community—literally. We believe that the church is where the poor and those who are disenfranchised can be heard and their needs can be met.

You mentioned Mennonite Disaster Service, which recently was highlighted for its work in the Sandy relief efforts. They’re known not only for coming early, but also for staying late. They stay until they feel they have helped to restore a core strength in a community that has been affected by a disaster. I did some work in the 9th Ward of New Orleans with Mennonite Disaster Service and I can tell you—it’s wonderful. When you are part of one of their projects, you begin with devotions in the morning. While I was in New Orleans, I worked on tiling a floor during the day. Then, there are lots of other opportunities for fellowship throughout the whole experience.

DAVID: Say a word about the peace tradition. Mennonites represent part of the great “peace church” tradition.

SHIRLEY: That’s right. That commitment to pacifism has been there since the beginning of Anabaptist history. It’s a very important part of what unites Mennonites and Amish and Quakers and a broad spectrum of people in terms of their practices in other areas of life. These are the historic peace churches and, to this day, they support each other and maintain solidarity in the face of what sometimes has been great resistance to this message throughout history. Mennonites continue to stand in harm’s way as peacemakers in conflict zones. They help people who have gone through trauma; they help people avoid conflicts; they help to heal brokenness wherever it is found.

We take Jesus at his word that we should love our enemies and turn the other cheek. We don’t participate in war—but we’re not content just to say: We won’t fight. Rather, we want to offer as much help to the world as we can in creating alternatives to conflict.

DAVID: At the very end of your book, you have added a few pages on these themes. Mostly, in this book, readers will be enjoying your years growing up as a Mennonite girl. Overall, if you could talk to readers finishing your book: What do you hope they will be thinking as they close your book?

SHIRLEY: Let me answer that question by quoting something I prepared for a video introduction to the book. I would leave readers with this thought:

The book’s title—Blush—refers to my discomfort in that place between the church and the world. It also means that I tried so hard to be sophisticated. It took me a long time to discover that God made me a feisty, curious, plain Mennonite farm girl for a reason. When I am vulnerable and wholehearted, I am much more aware of God and my community can come in and support me, even in times of conflict and pain and doubt.

I’m no longer plain on the outside, but I would love to be plain on the inside. Being plain is not simple. True simplicity requires us to drop our pretenses, let go of our ego and learn to embrace the blush, rather than to fight it. This wisdom is ancient. It’s as true for you as it is for me.

And, the place where it leads is—home.

CARE TO READ MORE?

REMEMBER THESE CONNECTIONS:

Shirley Showalter’s Website: This is the personal home for Shirley’s work as an author and educator.
MennoMedia: Here is the home page for the hub of Mennonite media today.
Herald Press: We also recommend Logan Mehl-Laituri’s For God and Country (In That Order) and Jonathan Larson’s Making Friends among the Taliban.

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(Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion, spirituality and interfaith and cross-cultural issues.)

PBS debuts BBC landmark film on ‘Life of Muhammad’

August 17, 2013 by David Crumm

Reporting and Review By DAVID CRUMM
Editor of ReadTheSpirit online magazine

When the British television network, BBC Two, unveiled its three-hour series, The Life of Muhammad, in 2011, British journalists and top Muslim leaders were invited to a special preview screening. They were met by network executives crowing about this historic event: They called it the first full history of Muhammad’s life produced for “Western TV.”

However, their claim was debatable. Millions of Americans already were familiar with the PBS network’s 2002 documentary Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet. That two-hour PBS documentary has subsequently been shown in countless schools, congregations and small groups nationwide—and around the world. The BBC officials were claiming that their three hours were so exclusively focused on Muhammad’s life that their film was a Western-media “first.” In truth? The BBC was splitting hairs in making its claim.

That’s one reason American media coverage of the August 20 PBS debut of that BBC series is muted, compared with the debut in the UK. Most American viewers assume that public television already has covered the Prophet’s life.

In fact, there are a lot of similarities between the productions. For example, Karen Armstrong appears as one of the main “talking heads” in both productions. Also, both the BBC and PBS networks bowed to Islamic requirements that only Muslims are allowed to visit the sacred cities where most of Muhammad’s life unfolded. In the case of PBS, the American convert to Islam Michael Wolfe was the chief correspondent and, as an observant Muslim, was allowed to film in the sacred cities. In the UK, BBC executives tapped Director Faris Kermani and chief on-screen correspondent Rageh Omaar. Both are Muslim. Curiously, as PBS promotes its debut of the British series, press releases emphasize only that Rageh Omaar has worked as a journalist for the BBC and for ITV News. In fact, in the British press, he was better known in 2011 as a correspondent for Al Jazeera’s English-language network.

On balance? Both documentaries were produced with an obvious awareness that these films could do more harm than good. There is a painstaking balance to both films that occasionally makes them slow going for casual viewers. Contrast these films with the much more provocative documentaries about Jesus and various eras of Christian history—some of which wind up on American cable TV channels each year—and you will feel the weight that PBS and BBC officials clearly feel on their shoulders.

How do these two productions differ? As its title indicates, the PBS series really is about Muhammad’s legacy and focuses quite a bit on the millions of diverse Muslim families in the U.S. The BBC series stays for all three hours with the Prophet’s life, spanning the 6th and 7th centuries. Overall, the BBC series is heavily weighted toward British experts and media personalities.

‘LIFE OF MUHAMMAD’—WHAT WE THINK:

Our Read The Spirit viewpoint: If you care about world religions and the growing religious diversity in the United States, this is “must see” television. You may even want to purchase the entire ‘Life of Muhammad‘ series on DVD, via Amazon. As Editor of Read The Spirit, I watched all three hours and can highly recommend the film. In tackling one potentially controversial issue after another, Omaar carefully presents various points of view and, in the course of the series, paints the kind of balanced portrait of Islam that fans of Karen Armstrong’s books will be comfortable watching on their TV screens.

The BBC deliberately costumed Omaar in this series as a humble journalistic traveler. Wherever he appears around the globe, he always is wearing a simple navy-blue or sometimes charcoal shirt, no tie, comfortable khaki slacks and sturdy hiking boots. Over his shoulder is a simple brown tote bag from which he occasionally pulls a book or some notes. We often see Omaar’s “talking head” popping up in dramatic settings to explain what we are seeing. The other experts he interviews usually are sitting in comfortable scholarly offices or libraries. At one point, Omaar does remove his traveler’s uniform to demonstrate for viewers how Muslim pilgrims to Mecca change into simple white garments. The production design of this series tells us loud and clear: These are all reasonable people talking wisely and compassionately about one of the world’s great faiths.

In other words, it’s a series you’d expect to watch in a class on world religions. Presumably, that’s where most of the DVDs for sale on Amazon are headed.

‘LIFE OF MUHAMMAD’—WHAT OTHER JOURNALISTS SAY:

In the UK, the conservative-leaning newspaper The Telegraph assigned two journalists to cover the BBC Two debut. The newspaper’s TV writer Chris Harvey called The Life of Muhammad “an excellent primer, tracing Muhammad’s journey from orphaned son to prophet of a new religion. … I enjoyed it.”

However, the Telegraph’s religion writer Christopher Howse was less impressed. He criticized the great lengths to which BBC Two went to please Muslims with the series, including bowing to Muslim requirements that only Muslims are allowed inside the sacred cities. The BBC would not have been so deferential in reporting on Judaism or Christianity, Howse argued. And, he has a point. On the other hand, the PBS network made the same choice by tapping Michael Wolfe for its film.

The more liberal-leaning newspaper The Guardian assigned Riazat Butt, a veteran religion writer with long experience in covering Islam, to cover the British roll-out of the series. In general, her columns on the documentary reported positive reactions. Her main criticism was that the filmmakers seemed bent on checking off an inventory of “typical” elements in Muslim culture.

Riazat Butt wrote, in part: “Even though we didn’t see the Prophet, we did see shots of praying (tick!), veiled women (tick!), jihadi references such as the planes flying into the twin towers … and veiled women praying (double tick!). There were also shots of camels. My score card is full. The opening episode deals with the circumstances and society that Muhammad was born into. It charts his childhood and early years—being orphaned, being taken in by his uncle—and the narrative is interspersed, interrupted I’d say, with shots of Rageh praying, Rageh brooding, Rageh climbing over rocks in a manful and foreign correspondent-like way.”

Want to see the series? Be sure to check local TV listings in your region as public television show times vary widely.

AND: Consider ordering the earlier PBS documentary from Amazon: Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet

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(Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion, spirituality, interfaith news and cross-cultural issues.)

The Ram Dass interview: Smiling as he teaches about ‘Polishing the Mirror’

July 14, 2013 by David Crumm

Baby Boomers know Ram Dass as an American celebrity from the 1960s who came back from India in 1971 to publish a strange square-shaped book: Be Here Now. Some call that book “the Baby Boomers’ Bible”—and there is a good argument behind such a claim. We recently reported on pulp magazine pioneer Ray Palmer, who began bringing Americans popularized stories about Asian religion even before World War II. But it wasn’t until the era of Be Here Now that millions of Americans could immerse themselves in full-scale Asian spirituality.

Since its debut, Be Here Now has racked up a stunning total of 2 million copies sold—and counting. Ram Dass has built on his original message in 11 additional books, a series of audio recordings, documentary films and short videos. Ram Dass also is famous for his 1978 establishment of the Seva Foundation, a highly respected charity that primarily focuses on curing illnesses of the eye in Asia, Africa and Native American communities.

Then, in 1997, Ram Dass made headlines once again for suffering a devastating stroke. As Baby Boomers, we were confronting our own looming mortality as we watched this perennially smiling genie of the ‘60s utterly humbled by his own body. As Ram Dass puts it himself: “I went from driving my sports car wherever I wanted to go—to being a passenger.”

Now, flash forward 16 years to 2013 and here is a personal note from me, David Crumm, as Editor of ReadTheSpirit: Over the decades, I have interviewed Ram Dass a half dozen times. This summer, I read his new book, Polishing the Mirror: How to Live From Your Spiritual Heart, with great interest.

In the opening pages, Ram Dass briefly retells the dramatic story that many Baby Boomers know so well: As a rising star in the Harvard faculty, 30-something psychologist Dr. Richard Alpert teamed up with psychologist Dr. Timothy Leary. In the new book, Ram Dass understates their titanic collision: “Meeting Tim was a major turning point in my life.” No kidding! The two Harvard scholars experimented with psychedelics, beginning with the mushrooms common in ancient Native American cultures. Leary and Alpert, later to become Ram Dass, were twin lightning rods, interacting with a Who’s Who of leading spiritual lights—from Aldous Huxley to Alan Watts and far beyond. They grabbed hold of the forces they were discovering—Ram Dass soon studying in India with his Hindu guru. Collectively, they pumped high-octane spiritual fuel into Baby Boomer culture.

When I learned that, these days, Ram Dass prefers to do interviews via video Skype, I was even more curious. Most Read The Spirit author interviews are conducted via telephone. On Skype, how would he look at age 82?

The answer: He’s old. Ram Dass says it that way in his book—he’s old. He’s noticeably slower and more deliberate in his expressive hand gestures. But, those who recall Ram Dass in his prime will be pleased to know that his sparkling eyes are undimmed and, when he gets going, he still likes to throw his head back and smile with that big, toothy grin we know so well. Post-stroke, aphasia continues to slow his speech. He must consciously think through his responses, so the words in this hour-long interview came slowly and often with pauses between phrases. Sometimes, we would stop so that I could read the words he had just spoken back to him, letting him gather his thoughts so he could choose his next words. (I haven’t included those repetitions in the following highlights of the interview.)

There is great inspiration in the 2013 life and work of Ram Dass, whether you are drawn toward Eastern religious traditions or not. As Baby Boomers, we take heart in seeing one of our most colorful mentors take old age and disability in stride. Sure, he’s a passenger these days—but, whatever seat he’s occupying in that sports car, he’s still speeding ahead of us toward our collective horizon line.

HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR INTERVIEW WITH RAM DASS
FROM HIS MAUI HOME ON ‘POLISHING THE MIRROR’

DAVID: The last time we talked, it was 2000 and you were just finishing Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing, and Dying. I was a newspaper correspondent, specializing in reporting on religion. Now, more than a decade has passed—feels like far more than a decade! We’re professional colleagues, you and I, but more than that—a lot of Baby Boomers think of you as a character in our own life stories. You’re our “friend,” in that sense. You’ve been an influential teacher and writer and, like a genie, you keep popping up in our lives. So, as an old friend to many, tell us a bit about what life’s like there at your Maui home.

RAM DASS: I came to Maui some years ago and vowed that I wouldn’t fly anymore. After a life of traveling city after city—moving all the time—I got here and decided to explore contentment. And, I am content. It’s just wonderful here. As we’re talking, I’m looking out and can see the ocean. The rains come very often here and I’m surrounded by such beautiful flowers.

DAVID: I’m also a longtime friend and colleague of Don Lattin. Several years ago, we featured an in-depth interview with Don and recommended his book The Harvard Psychedelic Club. I know Don talked to you while reporting that book about you and your old friends, Huston Smith and Andrew Weil and Timothy Leary. So, tell us what you think. Thumbs up? Thumbs down? Do you recommend Don’s book?

RAM DASS: I’ve known Don since he was religion editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, but I am not completely comfortable with that book. There were many other people active in that whole era and the story was more complex than what he writes. So, no, I wouldn’t recommend that book.

DAVID: But you certainly haven’t repudiated that wild era. In fact, you write about it honestly in the opening pages of your new book. This new book is mainly focused on spiritual teaching, which we’ll talk about in a moment. But, in the first few pages, you write about your early career. I’m fascinated especially by the way you still emphasize the importance of your three most famous words: “Be Here Now.” After more than 40 years, you’re still saying: There’s great wisdom in that phrase. Is that a fair thing to say?

RAM DASS: Yes. Yes, that is fair to say. When you delve into the moment, the moment right now—and you’re right now in the moment, the moment, the moment—then you are going into the spiritual life. The moment doesn’t include time and space. It’s just here. (And Ram Dass gently taps his heart.) In here. In here. Is there wisdom in those words? Yeah, I think: Very much so.

RAM DASS:
‘JUST WALKING EACH OTHER HOME.’

DAVID: Because you’ve been such an influence on a whole generation, I asked other writers what questions I should ask you in this interview. The one I’ve chosen is from Tom Stella, who was a Catholic priest for many years and now is an author and teacher of spirituality from his base in Colorado. Tom said, “Ask him about the line that I’ve repeated—and I’m sure lots of others have as well. Ram Dass says, ‘We’re all just walking each other home.’ Ask him to talk about that line.’”

When reading your new book, Tom’s question jumped out at me because one of the first sub-chapters is called “The Road Home.” So, please, talk about what you mean in this metaphor.

RAM DASS: Well, “home” is the one. It’s God. When I went into psychedelics, I had an experience where I felt everything being stripped away from my self. I was in my heart, my spiritual heart. All I could say was: “I’m home. I’m home. I’m home inside.”

Then, when I went to India, my guru looked at me with unconditional love. And I remember that as: “I’m home. I’m home. I’m home.”

We all spend so much time living in this outer world, then we encounter things that force us into our inner world. The inner world is what I consider to be home.

In “walking each other home,” I’m talking about how we as individuals—individual persons or individual countries with all of the separation that we experience—through moving toward inner consciousness, can become one. That’s a shift in consciousness. If we can find a way to walk each other home, we could reach a point where there is no more conflict between egos and nations.

RAM DASS:
‘THE WAY THE WORLD CHANGES IS HEART TO HEART …’

DAVID: This is a good place to ask you about the hard and rewarding work of “spirituality.” It’s a term you proudly use—and so do millions of American men and women, many of whom prefer that term to “religion.” This spring, the famous Rabbi David Wolpe issued a challenge in TIME magazine to anyone who claims to be “spiritual but not religious.” Wolpe pretty much described spirituality as easy and selfish. He wrote, “It’s important to remember that it is institutions and not abstract feelings that tie a community together and lead to meaningful change.”

RAM DASS: Institutions don’t change the world in fundamental ways. The way the world changes is heart to heart to heart by individuals, not by institutions.

DAVID: We are speaking, today, on the same day that the Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai is addressing the United Nations. TIME magazine now calls her one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. In her address to the UN, she said, “On the 9th of October 2012, the Taliban shot me on the left side of my forehead. They shot my friends too. They thought that the bullet would silence us. But they failed. And out of that silence came thousands of voices. The terrorists thought they would change my aims and stop my ambitions. But nothing changed in my life except this: Weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, courage and power was born.”

RAM DASS: (smiling, then laughing out loud) That’s just what I’m talking about! I’m sure that is affecting many hearts in the august gathering of the United Nations—and I’m sure it will affect the hearts of all the people who hear her story.

You know, this was true when we began the Seva Foundation. This is what happened to the ophthalmologist Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy. He began working in a very poor village in India with just a small eye hospital that he and his family supported. But it was the heart-to-heart spiritual connection that changed everything. He was working with patients, but he really saw them as souls. He saw his hospital and all that he was doing as a way to come to God. The repercussions of that model expanded his hospital and now this work is being done all over India. It began with his spirit and it spread heart to heart.

RAM DASS: ‘POLISHING THE MIRROR’

DAVID: Then, let’s talk about the title of your new book, Polishing the Mirror, which comes out August 1 and already is on sale at Amazon. At first glance, the title could sound like the very complaint that Rabbi Wolpe raised in TIME magazine—spirituality as narcissism. But you’re not talking about polishing mirrors so we look better to ourselves, are you?

RAM DASS: We polish the mirror of our spiritual hearts, so the beauty of our soul becomes visible. That means, we polish the spiritual heart so that, from our heart, we can radiate love and compassion and consciousness and other people can get in touch with their spiritual heart, too.

These days, when I roll down the street in my wheelchair, (tapping his fingers on his chest, over his heart) I love all the people I encounter. This is really true. I really do. And when I look into their eyes, I feel that I am mirroring their spiritual heart.

I am sorry that I am not more eloquent in speaking with you, (moving his fingers to point toward his mouth) but you understand that since my stroke my words come with difficulty.

DAVID: Your words are very engaging, today. And this is a good transition to talk about what I find to be the most fresh and hopeful part of your new book: the final section on the process of aging. Some of the insights in these pages are well known to us. But, I really was struck by your teaching that describes the central question in aging as: “Can you find a place to stand in relation to change where you are not frightened by it?”

RAM DASS: When you get old, everything changes—your body changes, your family changes. You can’t do what you’ve always done, anymore. And, either you can complain about things changing—or you can be content. Instead of complaining, you can say: “Oh, yesss! Look at all this change!” You can welcome it.

When I stroked in 1997 and then was lying in the hospital, all the people around me were saying: This poor guy! He’s had a stroke! I started to think that I must be a poor guy. Somebody put up a picture of my guru on the wall of my hospital room. I looked up at that picture and I said: Where were you!?! You know: Where were you in this stroke?! You’ve been raising up my life—all the way up to this stroke.

DAVID: You describe yourself in the book as depressed and angry, your faith deeply shaken.

RAM DASS: I thought I knew about aging and changing. (He smiles broadly.) As it turned out, this stroke has been an incredible grace for me. It is true that, in the past, I played golf and drove around in my sports car and I liked to play my cello. Now, I can’t do any of those things.

Instead, I’ve turned further inward—and that has been wonderful. That was grace.

In 1985, I wrote a book with Paul Gorman called How Can I Help? After the stroke, I found myself asking: How Can You Help Me? Instead of being this big, strong, powerful helper who could go anywhere and do anything—I find myself now dependent on so many people around me.

Now, as I say these things, you have to admit: It sounds bad doesn’t it? (He smiles knowingly.) Our culture says it’s bad to be dependent on others, right? Not a good thing! But, you know, we are all souls. That’s what Dr. Venkataswamy discovered in his clinic.

DAVID: And now we’ve come full circle to our previous interview, haven’t we? I remember interacting with you, at that time, just a few years after your stroke when Still Here was coming out—and that book supposedly held your teachings on Aging, Changing and Dying.

RAM DASS: (Still smiling broadly.) When we talked, I had written that book about what I thought aging and dying was all about. But I was in my 60s. Now, I’m in my 80s and this new book talks about what it’s really like. Now, I am aging. I am approaching death. I’m getting closer to the end. (He pauses, tilts his head back and looks out at the Pacific.) I was so naive when I wrote that earlier book. Now, I really am ready to face the music all around me. (And he laughs.)

Care to read more on similar themes?

Read The Spirit publishes a series of books on caregiving, from end-of-life decisions to everyday coping with chronic illness—even a humor book by cancer survivor Rodney Curtis, called A (Cute) Leukemia. Check it out in the We Are Caregivers department of Read The Spirit.

Share this Ram Dass interview with friends! Please, start a conversation with your friends by clicking on the blue-“f” Facebook icons connected to this interview. Or email this interview to a friend using the small envelope-shaped icons.

(Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering spirituality, religion, interfaith and cross-cultural issues.)

A Baker’s Dozen: 13 Best Films on Food and Faith

July 8, 2013 by David Crumm

By EDWARD McNULTY

As the Bible says, we do “not live by bread alone”—but food is vital in our lives and in the movies. Without food our bodies wither away and die—a challenge in the 1993 film Alive, a true story about members of a Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashes high up in the Andes. Food also is a source of great pleasure, as we see in such films as Julie & Julia or Eat, Pray, Love—a film that emphasizes our spiritual relationship with food. As a film critic for many decades, I am confident that you’ll love many of these movies, which you can find on DVD or, in many cases, live streaming.

Best Films on Food and Faith, 1: Babette’s Feast

Directed by Gabriel Axel. 1987. Rated G. 102 min.

Viewers step back into 19th-century Denmark, where we meet two elderly sisters and their fellow ascetic church members—stern and elderly, all of them. Into their lives comes Babette, a once famous female chef who has fled the French civil wars to become a lowly housekeeper and cook in Jutland. To mark this strict little congregation’s centennial, she prepares a meal so elegant and tasty that it overcomes the members’ vow not to enjoy it. Babette’s grand meal even becomes sacramental by reconciling various members who had been harboring grudges against each other. Only one of the guests, the erudite General who once sought to marry one of the sisters, recognizes the truth behind Babette’s main course. In his speech, he recognizes the grace that has enveloped them all. As viewers, we realize what a Christ figure the now humble cook and house servant is. The film won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. And, more importantly for this list, it won “Best On-Screen Recipe” at the 1997 Cinema and Food Retrospective Festival in Italy.

Best Films on Food and Faith, 2: Places in the Heart

Directed by Robert Benton. 1984. Rated PG. 111 min.

I know, food is not as central in the plot as in the first selection, and yet this film is book-ended by scenes of eating, the opening sequence showing people at breakfast around the village—some alone (one is homeless), others, black and white, gathered as families in homes and the local cafe. During the hard struggle by widow and mother Edna Spalding to harvest the cotton crop early and thus win the purse of money that will save the farm, she, her children, their blind boarder, her sister and husband, and the black itinerant worker Moze become like a family, which the closing sequence affirms. This is set at a Communion celebration in their church. As the trays are passed through the pews, we are surprised to see that even the black man forced by the Klan to leave town and Edna’s husband and a boy, both of whom have died violently, are in the pews partaking, the director/writer surrealistically affirming the reality of the Communion of Saints. The theme of forgiveness/reconciliation is also emphasized when the sister wordlessly forgives her husband as the pastor reads from 1 Corinthians 13.

Best Films on Food and Faith, 3: Fried Green Tomatoes

Director by Jon Avnet. 1991. Rated PG-13. 137 min.

In a small Southern town two women run the Whistle Stop Café where food becomes a symbol of hospitality and counter-cultural racial tolerance. It is during the Depression, and none are turned away, be they hobo or “Negro.” The local sheriff warns the women that the Klan does not appreciate their serving “coloreds” (though the women do bow to custom by serving African Americans outside), but the women refuse to stop. There is a macabre touch later when the sheriff, looking into the disappearance of the abusive husband of one of the women, appreciates the meat sauce. Their story, told by a nursing home resident to a browbeaten wife, empowers her to rise up and assert herself against her domineering husband.

Best Films on Food and Faith, 4: Spitfire Grill

Directed by Lee David Zlotoff. 1994. PG-13. 117 min.

The film’s title comes from the name of the grill in Maine where Percy, a young woman newly released from prison, hires on as a waitress. Of course, she does not immediately reveal her past to this town full of quirky folks. Despite the curiosity that rises around her, Percy manages to bring a large measure of grace to the grill’s elderly owner, to a verbally abused wife, and eventually to the whole town—even though she herself proves to be a terrible cook. There are many subplots in this film, including one about the plight of Vietnam veterans, but Percy clearly is the central character and redemptive force in the story. Although she turns out to be a Christ figure (though very different from Babette), she is, in Henry Nouwen’s phrase, “a wounded healer,” better at helping others than herself.

Best Films on Food and Faith, 5: Antwone Fisher

Directed by Denzel Washington. 2002. PG-13. 120 min.

The movie begins with a dream in which a little boy walks into a barn. A huge table is loaded with sumptuous-looking food, and around it stands a large number of men, women, and children, all smiling their welcome to the boy. The boy dreamer, now a grown US sailor in trouble for his constant fighting, tells his therapist that he was given up by his mother and abused by his foster mother and sister. Advised to return to his hometown so that he can get to the source of his problems, Antwone with the help of his girl friend flies back to his Midwestern hometown and manages to find an aunt and uncle. The film ends after a heart-rending disappointment, the pain of which is swallowed up by the lavish dinner his newly discovered relatives have quickly brought together to welcome him into the family, a beautiful foretaste of a Messianic banquet.

Best Films on Food and Faith, 6: What’s Cooking?

Directed by Gurinder Chadha. 2000. Rated PG-13. 109 min.

The film opens with Norman Rockwell’s iconic Thanksgiving painting—and the rest of the movie shows us how diverse American families have become. It’s Thanksgiving and we meet four American families—African American, Jewish, Hispanic and Vietnamese—all preparing for the holiday. They live in the same Los Angeles neighborhood, but their variations make their dinners a far cry from that Norman Rockwell image. A good deal of the film focuses on the preparations for these meals. What unites these families are all of the surprises and challenges they face as generational expectations collide. While apparently separate through much of the movie, their stories are skillfully brought together at the very end by a surprising event. The great female cast includes Mercedes Ruehl, Alfre Woodard, Joan Chen, Julianna Margulies, and Kyra Sedgewick.

Best Films on Food and Faith, 7: Pieces of April

Directed by Peter Hedges. 2003. Rated PG-13. 81 min.

Pieces of April is one of Katie Holmes’s most memorable performances as April, the Goth-garbed black sheep of an upstate New York family. The rest of her family regards her as an utter failure—and, at first glance, her humble New York apartment suggests that she and her boyfriend are struggling to survive. Nevertheless, she invites her parents and siblings to her flat for a Thanksgiving dinner, partly to mend fences and also to meet her boyfriend. Her family holds such a dim view of April that they almost do not come. Two plots unfold throughout the film: April desperately tries to prepare a proper dinner, even after her oven quits and other disasters befall her; meanwhile, her parents and siblings fight among themselves as they make their way toward her apartment. Soon, most of April’s neighbors are involved in this event. The delightful climax again suggests a Messianic banquet.

Best Films on Food and Faith, 8: Eat, Drink, Man, Woman

Directed by Ang Lee. 1994. Not Rated. 124 min.

Chu, a widower and one of Taipei’s pre-eminent chefs, is the strict father of three unmarried daughters who still live in the large family house, but have distanced themselves from him. He insists that they dine with him every Sunday, but they eat dispiritedly—and one even works at a fast food restaurant. He has lost his sense of taste, a good metaphor for what has happened to them all. Beautiful shots of food preparation and consumption, as well as a new appreciation of each other!

There is an Americanized version of the film entitled Tortilla Soup about a widower Mexican-American chef worrying about the future of his three unmarried daughters. Despite his losing his sense of taste, he continues to cook sumptuous meals once a week for the family.

Best Films on Food and Faith, 9: Alive

Directed by Frank Marshall. Rated R. 120 min.

I will admit that the most bizarre choices for this list is Alive, about Uruguayan rugby players, stranded high in the snowy Andes, who find themselves driven to eat the body of a teammate. The survivors have run out of food and see no prospect of being rescued soon, so the dying player seeks to give the only thing he has to help his teammates survive, his body—and by his encouraging words to remove their sense of guilt. What a take on John 15:13! The film is especially moving, because it is based on British writer Piers Paul Read’s 1974 nonfiction book, Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors. That critically praised book was based on the real-life tragedy of a Uruguayan charter flight that went down in 1972. That factual basis gives the emotionally gripping screenplay a real and haunting power.

Best Films on Food and Faith, 10: Julie and Julia

Directed by Nora Ephron. 2009. Rated. 123 min.

This list would not be complete without including the Queen of the Kitchen and television’s first world-famous celebrity chef: Julia Child. The great Nora Ephron wrote the screenplay, but like the previous film on this list, Ephron’s screenplay is based on historical fact. Blogger Julie Powell, the author of Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, attained celebrity status with her online columns about cooking her way through Child’s famous cookbook. The Ephron movie intertwines the blogger’s life with the life of the famous chef and her devoted husband Paul. Although I enjoyed Julie’s portion of the film, I wanted less of Julie and more of Julia’s and Paul’s largely unknown story. Wow, they both worked for a US spy agency and got caught up in the McCarthy era anti-Communist frenzy! Tell us more! (Wonder about the specific connection between Julia Child and spiritual themes? Consider reading David Crumm’s Our Lent: Things We Carry, which includes a chapter on this connection.)

Best Films on Food and Faith, 11: Big Night

Directed by Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott. 1978. Rated R. 107 min.

Two brothers have come from Italy to New York to open their dream restaurant, which they call Paradise. Primo (Tony Shalhoub) is the genius in the kitchen and Secundo (Tucci) manages the books and the customers. Primo refuses to cater to his customers’ wishes, and so the restaurant is failing for lack of business, whereas the one across the street serving mediocre food is a big success. That owner offers to ask the famous singer Louis Prima and his band to play at Paradise, which will attract a crowd and also the press. Most of the film is the preparation of the gourmet dishes and then, with a restaurant full of customers, waiting for the singer to show up. Where are the religious themes in this film? In short: Everywhere. To this day, college courses discuss the transcendent symbolism in the film. Or, as Roger Ebert put it more simply: The film “is about food not as a subject but as a language—the language by which one can speak to gods, can create, can seduce, can aspire to perfection.”

Best Films on Food and Faith, 12: Mostly Martha

Directed by Sandra Nettelbeck. 2001. Rated PG. 107 min.

This German film is about the transformation of a domineering chef forced to take custody of her eight year-old suddenly orphaned niece Lina. Chef Martha Klein is as abrasive with her staff and critical customers as is Chef Primo in The Big Night. The romance, and conflict arises when Italian sous-chef Mario arrives, his sunny, playful disposition changing the frigid atmosphere of the kitchen. Whereas the obsessive Martha had failed to bring Lina out of her depression, Mario quickly rekindles the girl’s interest in life—and food. Martha soon sees Mario as a threat, and Lina causes no end of crises for all three of them. As in The Big Night, there are many levels of spiritual reflection in Mostly Martha. At one point, for example, Martha is so exasperated in her attempts to make Lina behave that she tells her: “I wish I had a recipe for you, that I could follow.” The 2007 American remake is worth seeing—after all, it stars Catherine-Zeta Jones—but you should first see the original!

And to make it a Baker’s Dozen: Fordson—Faith, Fasting, Football

Directed by Rashid Ghazi. 2011. 92 min.

Read the Spirit Editor David Crumm (who I mentioned above) recommended that we include this 13th film and I must explain that it is the one feature on this list that I have not seen myself. David recommends this documentary because it is a rare feature-length film exploring the Muslim experience in America with food—and the lack of food—during the annual fasting month of Ramadan, which begins this week as Stephanie Fenton’s story about Ramadan explains. You won’t find this movie on Netflix or on Amazon, at this point, but here is director Rashid Ghazi’s website for the movie. The documentary is remarkably moving as it follows a group of teen-aged football players, trying to observe Ramadan’s strict fast without food or water during daylight hours. This deep commitment to faith and family traditions runs up against equally deep pride in their community, school and football team. How can athletes hope to prepare for the big game when they are denied food and water, day after day? There is a lot to inspire us—and to discuss—in Fordson.

Care to read more about Faith and Food?

Every week, Bobbie Lewis’s Feed the Spirit column tells stories (with delicious recipes!).

Care to read more from Edward McNulty?

Read Ed McNulty’s earlier series in ReadTheSpirit: TOP 10 JESUS MOVIES!
Another series for ReadTheSpirit: ‘THE HELP’ and more movies on the civil rights struggle.
Get his books: Ed McNulty has written three books of reflections on movies that are great for sparking spirited small-group discussion. Praying the Movies, available via Amazon, includes McNulty’s look at Star Wars, Schindler’s List and Pulp Fiction. Praying the Movies II: More Daily Meditations from Classic Films, includes McNulty’s reflections on Gandhi, It’s a Wonderful Life, Harry Potter and O Brother, Whereart Thou? Faith and Film: A Guidebook for Leaders, includes Amistad, Erin Brockovich, the Matrix and Shawshank Redemption.
CHECK OUT HIS WEBSITE: Ed’s own website is Visual Parables, where some resources are available to all readers. A subscription unlocks study materials for small groups.

(Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion, values and cross-cultural issues.)

The Jim Wallis Interview: What Abe Lincoln, C.S. Lewis, Narnia and Puddleglum can teach us about the Common Good

May 19, 2013 by David Crumm

THE COMMON GOOD. When is the last time you heard that phrase? Perhaps it came from a memorable high school teacher, a beloved mentor in your profession, or a wise aunt who taught you a lot about life. Now, best-selling author and social-justice activist Jim Wallis is barnstorming the country trying to rescue that phrase from the cob webs of nostalgia.

This idea is so powerful, Wallis argues, that it may hold the key to finally resolving the political and cultural wars that have brought America and the rest of the world to a standstill.

In today’s interview with ReadThespirit Editor David Crumm (below), Jim Wallis talks about how this idea suddenly resurfaced in his own life—during a retreat in a remote forest where he says he could almost feel the great Lion Aslan from C.S. Lewis’s Narnia novels walking at his side. This is part of the inspiring story that Wallis tells in his new book: On God’s Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn’t Learned about Serving the Common Good.

All this week in the OurValues column, sociologist Dr. Wayne Baker will explore the practical implications of the Common Good in today’s political, cultural and global crises. If you order a copy of Jim’s book (click the book cover, above, to visit its Amazon page), you will find that this interview and Baker’s OurValues series cover the book’s two major parts: Part 1, Inspiring the Common Good, and Part 2, Practices for the Common Good.

Here is David Crumm’s interview with Jim Wallis …

OUR INTERVIEW WITH JIM WALLIS ABOUT
‘ON GOD’S SIDE’ & REDISCOVERING THE COMMON GOOD

DAVID: Your book makes an eloquent Christian case for rediscovering the Common Good; you show how this concept flows upwards to us from the roots of Christianity in Jesus’s teachings. You explain how C.S. Lewis’s Aslan the Lion reminds you of this truth. However, before you introduce readers to Aslan, you introduce Abraham Lincoln. You quote, at length, from his Second Inaugural. The Common Good is a deeply religious idea, you argue—but, first, you point out that it’s also an American civic ideal as articulated by Lincoln and enshrined in Washington DC. Why did you decide to start with Lincoln?

JIM: Readers actually meet Lincoln right on the book’s cover. That cover is a lovely photo of the Lincoln Memorial at night. It’s my favorite of all the monuments in Washington—and I love the Second Inaugural. When I was tutoring inner-city kids and trying to help them learn to read, I sometimes would take them to the Lincoln Memorial and ask them to sound out word-for-word the Second Inaugural, especially: “With malice toward none, with charity for all …” In his final years, Lincoln was working so hard to bring the nation back together that he was no longer interested in simply identifying who was right and who was wrong.

There is so much in the Second Inaugural that we should study today. He actually talks about how Americans on both sides of the Civil War “read the same Bible and pray to the same God.” Then, he points out that “the prayers of both could not be answered.” What Lincoln is describing here is conflict resolution. In the real world, we do resolve most of our human conflicts without resorting to violence. We resolve conflicts—large and small—in a peaceful way every day. War really is a failure, Lincoln is saying.

THE COMMON GOOD: AN OLD IDEA FORGOTTEN TODAY

DAVID: This is a good point to ask a practical question on behalf of our regular readers: If we already own some of your other books—why buy this one? And I think you’ve just touched on that unique, central theme of this new book. Right after quoting Lincoln in the book, you argue: “Lincoln had it right. The biggest problem with religion is that people, groups, institutions, nations, and all of our human sides sometimes try to bring God onto our side. When people and groups are sure they are right, they want to confidently say that God agrees with them. … The much harder task, and the more important one, is to ask how to be on God’s side, as Lincoln is suggesting.”

JIM: This is really the first time I’ve focused a book on the common good, which is such an old idea and yet is almost forgotten today. In our various traditions, the common good really is a powerful notion that we are all accountable for each other. If we can restore that sense of the common good, we can move forward. In the book’s subtitle I say that politicians don’t learn about serving the common good anymore. Now that I am touring the country and talking about this book with readers, I actually wish I could go back and make that subtitle even stronger: Now, I’d say “Politics is the Enemy of the Common Good.”

DAVID: In the new book, you’re also saying something quite provocative about the nature of your own Christian faith. You’re saying that Christianity is not about each person grabbing a ticket to heaven. More than that, you argue that the purpose of religion is not to prove that we’re right and then to impose our slate of pre-determined values on others. You write that Jesus’s “better way of life wasn’t meant to benefit just Christians, but everybody else, too.” Am I fairly summarizing this?

JIM: Yes, you’re doing well in explaining it. We are called for the sake of other people, not just ourselves. That’s the point of the whole thing. We live in a pluralistic society—religiously and politically—so I’m asking: How do we evoke our faith in a context that is democratic? The whole idea is that we cannot lead by control, by imposing our control on others. But we can lead others by example, by lifting up the values we can all hold for our common good. This is a servant posture, not a posture of campaigning to impose our will on everyone. Dr. Martin Luther King never said: I get to win because I’m a Christian. He never said that. He said: We have to win the debate about the common good. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were not just good for blacks or for Baptists. These laws were a part of restoring and protecting the common good. King understood that.

THE COMMON GOOD IN CHRISTIANITY AND NARNIA

DAVID: In the second chapter of your book, you shift from Lincoln and your critique of the sorry state of American politics to the heart of your own faith—Christianity. You put it bluntly: Christians disagree about the main message of Christianity. You write: “If Jesus is mostly a private figure for our individual lives, our faith will be primarily personal and not much engaged in the societies in which we live. If Jesus just provides us a pathway to heaven, we won’t be much concerned with what happens on this earth. Or if we create a Jesus mostly in our own image, he won’t be very useful to ‘others’ who are unlike us.” Then, you add a crucial “But”!

You continue: “But if Jesus came because ‘God so loved the world,’ he will be a different Jesus for us. … If Jesus came to create a new community and not just save people, then that community’s collective life in the world will be of crucial importance. And if we as individuals are so drawn to Jesus that we want to learn the ways he would have us live, he becomes the Living Teacher who walks among us. All of which brings me to a lion.”

That’s how you introduce the section on Aslan. So, Jim, tell us about your encounter with Aslan the Lion.

JIM: I devote a whole chapter to that story. I began the sabbatical I took to write this new book by taking a retreat with a monastic community overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I’ve always loved Lewis’s stuff; I own all of his books. I’ve read the Chronicles of Narnia to our boys. We’ve seen the movie versions. I’ve been very familiar with the stories for years. But, there in this isolated retreat, I found some old copies of the Narnia novels in a little library they had organized for guests. I pulled out The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first Narnia novel, and decided I would re-read just that one.

DAVID: In describing this dramatic new encounter with Narnia, you write: “Sometimes I felt like Aslan was walking beside me, up and down the coastal hills to the sea, teaching me again what it means to be a Narnian. The lion helped inspire my hope to write a biblical and theological defense of the common good, something that has been almost lost in an age of selfishness.”

JIM: As you know, I didn’t stop with the first novel. In my retreat, I wound up going through all the novels. Aslan struck me as the archtypical leader for the common good in Narnia, particularly for the most vulnerable creatures. What is so very important is the ongoing personal relationship that Aslan has with many of Lewis’s main characters—the children who travel to Narnia and also some of the creatures from Narnia. They could walk along side him. They could reflect with Aslan about their own decisions and challenges and choices.

Sometimes, walking among the redwoods and along the ocean on that retreat, I did feel that Aslan was walking along side me. This really got me thinking about the image of Jesus as the loving teacher who walks among us in an ongoing way—rather than Jesus as a remote Savior who many traditionalists like to describe as having gone off to Heaven to prepare a place for us. I don’t want to sound overly judgmental in describing two extreme images of Jesus like this. What I’m trying to explain is how important I think it is to realize that Jesus is a living teacher who walks among us, reminding us of the common good we need to restore and protect in this world.

THE HOPE OF C.S. LEWIS’S PUDDLEGLUM
AND ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU

DAVID: That’s Aslan’s message and purpose in Narnia. Yes, I think Narnia fans will understand your point here, right away. But you go an important step further—because the truth is that we can’t all go off on intense retreats all the time and feel Aslan walking with us in a paradise landscape. You point to one of my own favorite characters in Narnia—the “marsh-wiggle” known as Puddleglum who appears in The Silver Chair. When I was growing up in the early 1960s, my father’s hardback copy of The Silver Chair was the first Narnia novel I ever read—and I loved this strange half-amphibian-half-human sort of figure. He lives in the marshes and can easily blend into the green landscape.

You actually quote nearly as much of Puddleglum in your new book as you do of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural.

JIM: Yes, the real question is: When we return from these intense periods, like the one I experienced on the retreat, how you keep believing in things even on days you don’t feel it? How do we keep the vision of the common good in front of us?

DAVID: For readers who don’t know Narnia—or have forgotten Puddleglum—the young heroes of the Narnian stories encounter him way out in a remote part of the C.S. Lewis landscape. Then, in the Narnia novel called The Silver Chair, they wind up trapped in a deadly underworld kingdom where they are completely locked away from real life up on the surface of the world. The deadly temptation is to forget about Narnia, to doubt that Narnia even exists and to turn away from Aslan’s vision for Narnia. But, in the midst of this terrible darkness and temptation, Puddleglum does something absolutely heroic, right?

JIM: I quote Puddleglum on the first page of that chapter and then again in the heart of the chapter. My question is: How do we keep believing in things, even on days when we don’t feel like it? Or on days when our belief may be fading? Well, Puddlegum is a great model for us. He courageously declares: “I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.”

I have to say: Thank you for asking me about this portion of the book. In all the interviews I’ve done so far about the new book, the interviewers just ask about politics, Washington, Barack Obama and the common good. Reporters seem to have a very narrow political focus on this book. But the truth is that writing the chapter on Lewis, the Lion and Puddleglum was the one I enjoyed the most. You know, the only real piece of art in my house is of a South African lion. It’s a beautiful piece of art I got years ago and this big lion has eyes that seem to be watching you wherever you stand—much as I imagine Aslan looking into our souls.

DAVID: As a reader, I found this book inspiring and full of fresh perspectives. Did you intend this book to be hopeful? Do you feel hopeful?

JIM: One of my mentors, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, helped me to see the difference between optimism and hope. Optimism is about how you look at things today, your mood at the moment and your assessment of the latest news. Optimism is about your immediate response to how things are going and your personality plays a big part in that. But, hope is not a feeling or a mood. Hope is a decision that you make because of a thing called faith, whatever faith may mean to you. Hope is really a decision that people like Arcbhishop Tutu make that shaped his whole life and the world, as well. Many years ago, he decided that there was going to be a free South Africa—long before anyone could imagine how that could happen. He made his decision to hope for a free South Africa—and he bet his life on it. Am I hopeful about our future? Yes, I am, and I’m betting my life on that hope, too.

Care to read more about Jim Wallis,
‘On God’s Side’ and the Common Good?

VISIT OUR VALUES FOR MORE: This interview focuses mainly on Part 1 of Jim Wallis’s new On God’s Side, called Inspiring the Common Good. In this week’s OurValues series, sociologist Dr. Wayne Baker looks at the book’s Part 2, Practices for the Common Good.

OTHER LINCOLN LINKS: 2013 is packed with 150th-anniversary milestones from Lincoln’s life. Here is a convenient Index to many of our most popular Lincoln-themed stories this year.

(Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion, spirituality, interfaith news and cross-cultural issues.)

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